


You Know, Hypothetically Speaking

by TheManTheMythTheLazy



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Baz really just makes a cameo, Light Angst, M/M, POV Second Person, POV Simon Snow, Post-Watford (Simon Snow), Simon Snow Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Simon has nightmares, Spoilers for Book 2: Wayward Son, The Humdrum is trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24494713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheManTheMythTheLazy/pseuds/TheManTheMythTheLazy
Summary: Lab research has shown that nightmares after trauma are different in some ways from nightmares in general. They suck more.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Kudos: 9





	You Know, Hypothetically Speaking

**Author's Note:**

> I've said before I like exploring this part of Simon. He's been through so much and there are so many parts of his life at play that make it interesting to write about. The title is to suggest that Simon Is Totally Handling Trauma Well™ This is supposed to flow like a spoken word piece.

When I go to sleep at night I don’t hold any pretense over my control of the matter. Sleep is the beast that hunts you down, mauls you, and then leaves you for dead. There is no chance of taming it or controlling it. It will do what it wants. It just will. When you have committed a crime as grave as me, then you know this fact intimately well. 

Sweat beads at your back when you watch the sun go down. You become restless, never in one place, eyes always taking in longer and longer shadows. Any thought of hunger is erased because your stomach is churning so badly that you might just throw up. The sun lowers behind the trees or the houses or the mountains, wherever you are at the time, and you just know. It’s hunting time. And you are woefully unprepared even though you promised yourself this morning that tonight would be different. 

It won’t be. 

It never is. 

And deep down you know this. But maybe this time your fort of pillows will protect you better. 

It won’t. And it never will. 

The beast hunts you and you close your eyes because your body is a betrayer and has always kept good company with it. And when it attacks you, it injects you with a poison that makes it so you see things, paralyzes you and holds you captive. Maybe you don’t feel anything, or maybe you do, but there is no mercy in either instance.

First you stand inside a stone building so old and cold there is no telling where you are in relation to the rest of the world. There is certainly no sight of the sun or the sky. Yet there you are, somehow able to see dusty books and cracks in the granite that curl and snake around the room, scarring the area surrounding. 

You can still hear the whisper of your breath and the pounding of your pulse because you know that the walls can hear it, too. You can still smell stagnant air so old that there’s no telling who breathed it in first, but surely when that person had, the air was sweeter and easier to take in that it is now, because right now it’s more difficult than gasping for breath beneath the water. It tastes like a throat full of mold and for a second or two there is no way you are anywhere close to a place on earth, but somewhere alien and unwelcoming. 

Except the sinister bit is that you know this place. You know it so well that you are hesitant to call it a home. There was a time where you played on these grounds as a child and the school ate up your laughter and you didn’t notice because you were too busy creating ships and trains and castles out of the trees and rocks. You created your enemies and you always won, and you never considered that one day this place would fight against you, that one day it would _hate_ you. That now every step deeper into its heart you poison it and it poisons you in return, a back and forth of entities that have survived the unsurvivable, but only one of you had been malicious about it and it wasn’t the building because stone could be harsh and cold but it couldn’t be evil. 

And you don’t know why you are here because this is the last place you want to be. 

There is no comfort in the centuries of memories held in this place, least of all the memories you created. But you are here and you walk forward. It is easier to push onward and fake the ease with which you used to make this place yours. It is easier to hop and skip over the flagstones without looking down and seeing its continued attempts to trip you up and drag you to the ground where you both know you belong. It is easier to look up instead and maybe whisper an apology or maybe not and let that ‘maybe’ be enough. To apologize in earnest would admit the truth of your feelings and there is no way you could unbox that here in this place that would love to tear you apart. 

There is something in this school that is seeking your confession. You can feel it brush at the back of your neck and then at your ear and then move to stand in front of you and poke insistently at the corner of your mouth where it has seen you lie before. This is the place that betrays you. This is the place that ghosts upwards at your first falsehood, barely noticeable but the something in the walls sees it well. 

This is the place that can’t quite remain still when you tell yourself over and over again that you are not upset, that you have no reason to cry, and that there are worse things that have happened to you. It is barely noticeable but the something in the walls sees it and pokes at it until you begin to notice it too. 

It pokes and it pokes until you are biting your lip to make it stop twitching without your permission. You keep moving and you swallow down the lump of anger in your throat and push yourself off of a stair like a springboard over your thoughts. You just want to get through this damn school. If you were to confess to anything it would not be here. It would be in the safety of your room, and never would you utter it. You would lock it far back in your mind where you keep all of your thoughts. 

It’s safest there. 

Somehow the school knows your intentions and it begins to narrow around you, trying to squeeze the truth out of you, but you press your lips shut because you are not going to give in. You push through tightly packed hallways, stomp on books and wayward wands, and carve a path for yourself towards the only source of light left. 

On the other side is home, you know this in your soul. You feel it call to you and so you run to it. You run so fast that you ignore your lungs that want to burst and your arms and face that sting from getting snagged on sharp corners, and you even ignore the new fact that you are barefoot and have no idea why, because just on the other side is safety and warmth and comfort. 

You burst through the door with a smile on your face, triumphant that you beat your own fear of a place that never had sentience to begin with. As you breath in open air you wonder why you were ever concerned in the first place. 

This school couldn’t hurt you. 

You were practically born within its walls. 

You learned life’s hardest lessons there. 

You turn back, prepared to make some kind of smart remark that is familiar enough on your tongue that it will calm your racing heart. That is when you notice the claws wrapped tight around your legs, digging into your skin and drinking the red, red blood that trickles towards your foot. These same hands are around your arms, your ribs, your neck. When you turn forward to the place where safety lay, there is a boy staring at you with eyes brighter than your own. He looks familiar like a twin. He has hair like you and skin like you even if it is a less vibrant. 

He wears his anger and disappointment like a second and third skin because he feels these emotions so wholly that you know he can’t split his time between them. You know he is upset with you and you know why and neither of you says anything, but you can feel your lump of rage scrabble its way back up your throat, indigestible. 

Because you know what? You feel like shit. To the point where it has become part of your personality instead of being a passing mood. It has warped you deep inside in places that you can and cannot see, and knowing this is devastating because you used to love yourself and know yourself, and now neither of these things is true. You can’t stand yourself and you don’t trust yourself and you know that you never will be able to, and you can’t articulate _why_ because language has never been your friend. 

And you are so _angry_ at this person before you because he has the _nerve_ to be disappointed in you, angry at you and believe them to be the most important feelings you will ever have to address, when the reality is what he feels towards you could never hold a candle to what you feel towards yourself. 

He is standing there feeling righteous and important while he is surrounded by magic that feels hungry and acts as if it never knew you to be part of it. 

And suddenly this scene is far too familiar, and the only piece of the picture you have to replace is the boy with a teen and you _know_. God you _know_. The world is ugly and bitter and complicated and it is both about and not about you because you hold the unique ability to just _make_ things happen, and it was fun until it wasn’t because now you know the faces and names and how’s of every person who has been hurt in the process. 

And you _know_ how this scene was invented, you know exactly where in the part of you it came from, because this same hunger and anger is inside you. And you know the two of you did not used to have it. 

This boy is standing before you, shoving that part of you that never healed back in your face and demanding an explanation he has never been owed. You want to yell at him, to rip him to pieces the same way he is doing to you despite not lifting a finger.

But this place does not belong to you.

The school is yours and it dawns on you that you could have had some small mercy if you had only listened and stayed within its walls.

He is telling you that you need to be punished as if this is the first time you have ever considered the idea. Of course you need to be punished. You did something evil because something evil looked inside you and saw that it was only natural. Yet what you also understand is he has no right to punish you.

Because a family of Mages created you to be this way. 

And the injustice of it all builds in you until you feel hot under your skin and the corner of your mouth makes you smile at the hypocrisy of it all. You know he is going to use the magic against you because you have seen it before. You know what to look for in the glint of his eye and the hardness of his mouth and the power of his stance and the puff of his chest. 

This scene is all too familiar and it is foul. 

You feel its familiarity rot in your soul and your body so that when you look down and see flames at your feet you are not surprised. 

He tells you this is for the good of everyone you put in danger. He tells you that magic will always balance itself, that it is only natural. When the magic touches you he tells you that you will be stripped of all that built you. There will be nothing left, and he says this will be the kindest thing.

But what he will never understand is he is merely ripping away the last vestiges of who you used to be; the last parts of yourself that you loved. 

And you are so angry, but you cannot fight back. 

You are essentially this lifeless thing now and _you have seen this before._ And _you know_ _where this came from._ You know it came from a place of loneliness and hurt and betrayal and anger and that this place was bred from an unnatural _sickness_ that is permanent. You know this place intimately, especially now that it is all he has left for you. 

This place is you now, and you know it is wrong but he doesn’t. 

He thinks it is kind.

He leaves you mauled and bleeding. 

The hands recede from your body and the flames turn to smoke at your feet. Magic no longer wants anything to do with you. It cannot recognize you. You are unnatural. 

...

Then you wake up and the sky is bright and beautiful and your Love is asleep beside you embodying all that is beautiful in the world. You sit up and yawn and stretch and shuffle down into the kitchen after sneaking the softest kiss to his mouth. You start up the kettle and turn on the television and you let the dream disappear from your mind. 

You’ve been hunted and mauled and left for dead, but you are awake now and have another day to get through. 

And I don’t know about you, but what bothers me most about this, as I watch the water heat up at at a snail’s pace, is that I realized (having had this dream so many times) The Humdrum had long hair this time. It did not suit his face. 


End file.
